by Jackson Ford
I run my finger down the oil-spattered page of the cookbook next to my stove, take a swig of beer. It’s my third, and I only started drinking an hour ago, but screw it. I put the bottle down and go back to scraping, which is when the smoke alarm goes off.
What the actual fuck? I know I let the rice burn, but the thing can’t be that sensitive. Except… Jesus, there’s a lot of smoke. My little apartment has high-ish ceilings, and it’s all collected there, turning the air hazy. It looks like someone hot-boxed the place.
I send out my PK in a wild burst of energy, hunting for the off switch on the alarm. As I do so, my foot lands on a wet patch on the kitchen tiles. I grab at the counter for balance, arms whirling. My flailing hand just nicks the half-full beer bottle, knocking it off the counter to shatter in a bazillion pieces across the floor.
I stand, breathing through my nose, listening to the blaring alarm, doing my best to think very hard about nothing at all.
I somehow manage to shut the noise off, and grab a dustpan and mop out from under the sink with my PK to handle the shattered bottle. Then I go back to scraping, keeping what’s left of my poor mind on the beer clean-up.
PK is great for multitasking, but I do sometimes my wish my parents had given me other abilities. Super-powered cooking skills would have been nice. The ability to sense burning before it begins. Not exactly useful when you’re trying to create the perfect soldier, but definitely more applicable to everyday life.
The central part of the burnt rice still won’t budge. It’s tempting to just rip the stove and oven out of the wall with my PK and send them smashing through a window. I can do it, too. I used to think I could only lift around three hundred pounds, but a few months ago I discovered I was… Well, let’s just say I’m a lot stronger than that now.
There’s a knock at the door.
No way is it seven-thirty already. It can’t be. A look at the oven clock tells me otherwise. Goddamn it, he was supposed to text when he was getting close.
I grab my phone from its charger by the fridge, and of course, he did. I just didn’t hear it because I was too focused on not destroying dinner.
There’s a horrible moment of frozen panic, where I’m not sure if I should keep cooking, open the windows for the smoke, answer the door, get him a drink or just fall over.
I settle for the door. I badly wish I had time to smarten up – when your crush is coming over for dinner, these things matter. I’d planned to put on something a little less gross than the 2Pac tank I’m wearing, and fix my hair. I’ve been growing it out lately, and it’s pulled back in a short, messy ponytail, black strands going every which way.
I take a deep breath, tell myself to calm the fuck down, and open the door.
THREE
Matthew
The book’s gotten boring. Matthew’s already figured out who committed the murder. Part of him is pleased that he managed to outsmart the writer, even as he’s equally annoyed that there’s no point in finishing the story now.
For the first time in hours, he lifts his gaze from the iPad, blinking. It’s gotten dark outside the truck. Clouds have just started to gather, deep and black, scudding across the sky. The dashboard clock reads 6:02.
“I’m hungry,” he tells his mother.
“OK,” Amber says carefully, not taking her eyes off the road. “There’s some chips in the back, I think?”
“I don’t want chips. I want a tuna sandwich.”
“We’ll be at San Bernardino in a little bit. We’ll stop for some dinner there.”
“I don’t want it in a little bit.” His voice has gotten louder. Why does she always try to calm him down? “I’m hungry now.”
“Baby, don’t get mad. I’ll find you some food soon, OK?”
She should have gotten snacks. He can’t buy food – he’s too little, even if he knows a lot more than most grown-up people. The annoyance turns to anger, boiling up inside him, his chin trembling. A tear pricks at the edge of his left eye. He lets it drop – grown-ups hate it when kids cry.
He reaches out with his mind, grabs hold of a small rock from the side of the road. It’s harder to do if he’s in a moving car than if he’s standing still, but he manages to snag it, whipping it at the window as they rumble past. It collides with a crack, making his mom yelp.
“Baby, please…”
In response, he grabs another rock, cracking the back window. “I’m not a baby,” he yells.
“Mattie, I’m sorry, I—”
A chunk of soil spatters across the windshield on her side, and she has to fight not to swerve. Matthew’s anger grows and grows. He’ll make her get out the car and stand still so he can teach her a lesson. The thought of pelting her with dirt, of finding the smallest, sharpest rocks he can, fills him with a slippery little jolt of glee. It’s the kind of glee most children feel when they do something bad, when they draw on a wall or pour a full glass of milk on the floor. Most children have the sense to back away from it, aware that they’re taking a risk – not just the wrath of a grown-up, but something much more primal.
Deep inside Matthew, there’s a twitch of worry – a little vestigial tail, weak and helpless. The worry that this time, he might have pushed it too far. He ignores it, as he always does. He’s done way worse than this before, and hasn’t gotten in trouble, not really. Not even at the School. Definitely not with Amber.
Thinking of the School makes him angrier. Matthew wishes he’d stayed. So what if the government was coming to shut the place down? He wouldn’t have let them. Ajay and the other teachers knew what he could do – they’d tested his powers a bunch of times. He was the smartest person there, everybody knew it, so he didn’t get what the big deal was. He shouldn’t have let Ajay talk him into running.
He howls, tears gushing down his cheeks now, mouth twisted in a snarl as his mother begs and pleads. Dirt and rocks hammer the car, cracking the rear window, scudding against the tyres. No one else can do what he can do, no one else knows how, they’re not smart enough. What would happen if he threw something bigger? Concentrated a little bit more, grabbed a rock or a boulder, smashed it right into Amber’s stupid face? Is she saying he can’t? Does she really think he won’t do it?
A building looms out of the darkness. A gas station, just ahead, the awning visible around a sloping hillock. Amber gasps with relief. “There! We’ll stop quick, OK? Get some dinner.”
For a moment, Matthew wants to keep going. Just smash the car to pieces, see what she does. But he is hungry. He wasn’t making that up. Slowly, the anger fades. Not gone completely – just smaller now.
Maybe they’ll have toasted tuna sandwiches.
Despite the fact that they’re in the middle of nowhere, the gas station is a big one, a huge Chevron sign perched on a massive awning. The concrete apron is old, worn in spots, but clean. There’s movement behind the windows of the station’s store, a clerk stacking a shelf already loaded with potato chips. To the right of the store, a man wearing overalls tied around his waist fiddles with a cage of propane tanks. A green Toyota idles at the pumps, the driver getting ready to pull away.
At that moment, Matthew feels a twitch, deep in his gut. It makes his eyes go wide, banishes the anger and hunger.
“Stop the car,” he says.
“Just going to park, baby.”
“STOP THE CAR NOW!”
She slams the brakes, face twisted in confusion and fear. Matthew leaps out before they’ve even come to a halt, popping the door and shooting across the grey tarmac.
He’s always been able to feel the ground – the dirt, the rocks, the soil. He can feel them all in his mind, like he’s holding them in his hand. He’s so used to it he barely notices, but this… this is different. This is big. Bigger than the biggest rock he’s ever lifted. It’s like the ground is calling to him, from very far down. He’s never felt anything like it before.
The Toyota has just begun to pull out from the pumps, and it comes to a screeching halt as Matthew crosses its
path. He ignores the driver’s angry hand gesture. He just sidesteps, sprinting for the edge of the concrete apron. Behind him, Amber comes round the other side of the truck, shouting his name.
He skids to his knees, hands exploring the desert dirt. There’s not a breath of wind. The tears on his cheeks haven’t even dried yet.
“Matthew!” Amber reaches her son, coming to a halt a few feet away.
It’s energy. Not the smooth, even energy he gets in a rock, or a clod of soil. It’s pulled tight, stretched like guitar string. It’s deep, almost too big for him to wrap his mind around. He’s directly over it.
“What—?” Amber stops, coughs. “Sweetie, what’s going on?”
The propane guy shouts something from back by the building. Matthew ignores him. “I can’t even feel the end of it,” he says. “It goes on for ever.”
The energy line runs north to south, going further than he can touch. For the first time in his four years of life, Matthew feels something other than joy, or anger, or annoyance.
What he feels is awe.
Genuine, ice-cold awe.
“It’s deep,” he says. “It’s real deep. But I think… OK, I’m just going to try something…”
He places his hands flat on the ground, lowers his head. Around them, the loose rocks in the topsoil begin to shake.
FOUR
Teagan
A lot of lawyers don’t know how to dress down. Nic Delacourt isn’t one of them.
He’s wearing a crisp, grey V-neck T-shirt over dark jeans. It’s been threatening rain all day, and it looks like it just started: a few drops glisten on his bald head. Yes, we do occasionally get rain in LA.
Nic coughs from the smoke. “Bad time?”
“Perfect, actually. Come on in.”
He waves a hand in front of his face. “Think I’ll stay outside. Where there’s air.”
“Shut up.” I pull him into a hug, making sure to keep it quick and friendly. His shoulders are tight under his shirt – he’s toned, rather than ripped, but he spends a lot of his spare time outdoors. Nic’s a surfer, and snowboarder, and rock climber, with a knack for finding the best spots to do those things in.
But listen, you think you’ve had awkward break-ups? Try this. Girl has psychokinetic abilities. She works for the government doing bad-ass secret-agent shit, and they refuse to let her reveal those abilities to anyone. That means she doesn’t dare have a boyfriend because said abilities go haywire during sex. (Oh, your teenage years were awkward? Imagine tearing your room apart every time you masturbate).
Then, a really cool guy she’s friends with asks her out, and she has to be a dick and say no. Then she’s framed for murder, and has to go on the run. She ends up asking the cool guy for help, and in the process, reveals her powers to him.
Cue major freak-out, I’m-living-in-an-Avengers-movie, holy-shit-superheroes-are-real, blah blah. It didn’t help that right after, we got ambushed by a group of special forces commandos, and I ended up wrecking Nic’s apartment in the escape. That was before we all got chased down Wilshire Boulevard by one of the commandos, a psychopath named Burr who had a real hard-on for taking me out.
Anyway, he got over it – Nic, I mean, not Burr; Burr is a flaming ass-clown who will never get over himself, let alone me. The day was saved. Well, saved might be a little strong. I made it out, but lost another friend in the process. Our wheelman slash grease-monkey, Carlos Morales. Also known as Chuy. Also known as the asshole who fucked us over, framed me for murder and nearly got us all killed. Also known as my former best friend in the entire world.
The less I think about him, the better.
Bad guys dead, injuries healing, back to normal. Psychokinetic girl asks cool guy out. Even kisses him. And cool guy turns her down.
Sad trombone.
Don’t get me wrong: Nic doesn’t owe me anything. He’s got every right to think things through, and make his own decisions. It just… sucked.
Shock horror, I don’t define my self-worth by what someone else thinks of me – definitely not what a man thinks. Never have, never will. And after Nic decided he didn’t want to be with me, I went through a period of real anger. It was a self-righteous, high-horse kind of anger. I didn’t need Nic, I didn’t need anybody.
It didn’t last long. Mostly because I missed him.
I missed hanging out with him. I hated not being able to call him up after I got a tip on a new food truck, or to zip over to the other side of LA to try out a new pho place.
And sometimes, two people can’t stay apart. Ask anybody who hooked up with an ex, even though they knew it was a bad idea. We started texting. Then we started meeting up for coffee. I was careful. He knew how I felt about him, and I didn’t want to scare him off. Tonight is the first time he’s been back to my place since we kissed.
I still want to date him. But I also know it’s going to take a while to convince him that we’d be good together, especially given what I do for a living. The old me might not have been so careful, but let’s just say that the past few months have taught me a little bit about being careful.
“Hope you like paella,” I say, stepping aside to let him in.
He wrinkles his nose. “I like it when it’s not on fire.”
“Shut up. I’ll deal with the food, you open a window. I’ve got awnings, the rain shouldn’t get in.”
“Can you turn the music down a little?”
“What? Oh. Sure.” I have two massive, ancient speakers in my lounge, currently playing some very loud rap. Jay Rock – the Follow Me Home album. I reach out with PK and turn the volume down.
“I brought beer.” He drops a damp cardboard box on the counter and heads over to the window.
“Is it that hoppy shit you like?”
“Different kind. Not as strong.”
“So I’ll be tasting hops for days then, not weeks.”
He gives an awkward laugh. For a few seconds, neither of us say anything.
“Here.” I toss him a beer from his six-pack, desperate to break the moment, and crack one for myself. “Cheers.”
“Cheers.” He takes a sip that is just a little too deep. The kind you take when you’re waiting for the other person to say something.
We crash on the ratty couch. Like everything else in here, it’s seen better days, and like everything else, I can’t bear to get rid of it. At least I managed to tidy the place. Sort of. I didn’t really have shelf space for all my cookbooks, so they’re currently in a stack taller than I am, over by my bedroom door. My plastic spatula is probably underneath them.
I draw my legs up. “How’s the caseload?” Nic’s a special assistant in the District Attorney’s office.
He rolls his eyes. “I see briefs when I go to sleep at night.”
“Fun.”
“Anyway, it’s the usual boring shit. What about you? How’s work?”
He tries so hard to make it sound like a casual question that it ends up sounding really awkward. Not exactly surprising. For most people, work is sitting in an office or drilling stuff on a construction site or waiting tables. For me, it’s using my PK to break into places and put tracking devices on briefcases and lift important objects out of moving cars.
“Work’s good. We’re prepping for a mission in a couple days.”
A flicker of a smile. “Paul still making you guys do moving jobs?”
“Ugh. Yeah.” The little outfit we work for has a cover: a removals company called China Shop Movers. Our logistics guy, Paul Marino, is the Daniel Day-Lewis of secret agents. He loves getting into character.
“He still dating…?” Nic frowns.
“Annie.”
“Right, Annie. I can’t believe that – they seem really different.”
“They are.” Annie Cruz is the point person on our ops, which is a fancy way of saying she’s my babysitter. She has a sense of humour so small you’d need an electron microscope to detect it.
“How do they actually make that work?”
“I hear he’s really good in bed.”
He forces another laugh, even more awkward than the first. Of course I had to make a joke about sex. Why do I even bother trying to stop myself?
“Hungry?” I say, desperate to change the subject.
“Kind of. I don’t mind waiting if…”
“No, it’s cool, I don’t want it to get cold.”
Bowls. Paella. I give the rice a big squeeze of lemon, which should take care of any carbonised aftertaste. I dish up, giving Nic a few extra shrimp, then bring the bowls back to the couch.
Our relationship doesn’t hinge on whether I can make paella or not. All the same, I just want him to like it. All the good things in life happen over food – or at least, they begin there.
Nic and I first started hanging out because we both loved eating, and with tonight’s meal, I kind of want to remind him why we work so well together. Why we should be together. In the past few months, I haven’t thought about much else.
He looks down at the mess of paella, and takes a cautious bite.
I search his expression for a hint of a grimace, a sign that he’s not enjoying it. He chews it slowly, swallows – then quickly takes another forkful, jamming it into his mouth. I take a bite of my own – and I’m stunned to find that it’s actually OK. Not amazing – more Guy Fieri than Ferran Adria – but definitely edible. If you were stuck in the wilderness with only a bowl of my paella to keep you going, you wouldn’t be all that mad.
For a minute or so, we eat in surprisingly comfortable silence. Jay Rock is still playing in the background, rapping about how you ain’t gotta like it cos the hood gon’ love it. I’m about to mention to Nic that I want to go see him at the Coliseum next month when he says, “So you talked to Reggie yet?”
“Hmm?”
“About chef school?”
“Not yet. But,” I say, when I spot him starting to reply, “I’m planning on talking to her tomorrow, actually. She’s heading off to Washington on Thursday.”
“To meet with Tanner?” he asks.
